Edward Elmer Smith was born in 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
He was many things: lumberjack, farmer, streetcar operator, railroad worker,
asphalt hauler, hard rock miner, food chemist, explosives engineer and
writer. He pioneered the field of doughnut mixes and created the genre
known as space opera with the novel The Skylark of Space.
His magnum opus was the Lensman series, a multi-part epic which was
structurally superb. He died in 1965 in Seaside, Oregon.